Tag #152974 - Interview #78408 (Lidia Korotina)

It was still possible to buy train tickets, but when we arrived at Dnepropetrovsk a bombardment destroyed the bridge. The train arrived at one side of the Dnieper river and was to depart from the opposite bank. Air raids began and the three of us ran over some plank work to catch the train. From Makhachkala we went to Krasnovodsk by boat and were planning to go to Tashkent, where  Odessa University had been evacuated. We went part of the way in a railcar and another part in a carriage with plank beds and hay to sleep on. There were no comforts, of course. At one station, Tikhoretskaya, my father went out to get some water and then cried out to us to get off the train, as his mother and sister Sima were there.  Sima was a doctor with a military unit. My parents and I went on our way, but Sima and Grandmother stayed at that station.  Someone on the train told us that the University was in Samarkand and we got off the train there.